Bear the Great – Chapter One-Hundred-Eight.
The killer had always been a little dyslexic. Sometimes when working on a particularly thorny coding problem, he’d transpose variable names. It was maddening, but not something he couldn’t overcome with a little persistence. And patience. He was, after all, exceedingly persistent and patient. Two of his finer qualities, if he did say so himself.
The question now was this: What to do with the shovel? This was a problem like any other, and he had great faith in his own abilities as a problem-solver. For instance, it was a bit of a hike to get up to the top of South Rim, but doing the deed on site rather than transporting a body wrapped in a tarp stowed in the trunk of his car eliminated all sorts of potential problems with DNA and fiber evidence. And disposing of the hammer in the lake? Well, he’d not thought of that solution right away, but it came to him soon enough after he’d observed her heading out to Chatfield with her own kayak strapped to the roof of the car. Thanks again for that, btw.
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The shovel had been sitting there staring back at him in the garage for a good long while now. And he wasn’t interested in another long night sitting out on the reservoir getting stiff and cold under a hoodie pulled up to obscure his face. New moon only came once a month, after all. The solution presented itself like a gift from God after he opened his email and saw yet another annoying communique from @RampartsBob about the goddamn siding project. Sheesh. This thing was gonna be expensive. But then, almost as if manna from heaven had come raining down, it became immediately clear to him how he could dispose of the shovel.
He waited for full dark, then went out and unwrapped the black electrical tape from wires leading to each of the four security cams. No sense leaving a permanent record for any potentially prying eyes, right? The shovel would be the agent of its own elimination. He used it to dig a trench about 4′ long and down as deep as he dared without potentially hitting a gas or water line along the foundation of his own house. Then he threw the damned thing in, pushed the dirt back into place with his boot, and stomped it down more or less flat. If anybody ever said anything, he could always blame it on the wife-next-door. She’d already been a big help so far, in ways she probably could never even have imagined. But in any case he couldn’t imagine it ever coming to that. He was, after all, the consumate problem-solver.
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Bear’d gotten out of the yard again. His early-morning sniff and pee sessions were getting longer and longer. Ginger hoped this pet psychic stuff was going to help, but she wasn’t 100% sold yet. And she wasn’t about to try and raise the top of their fence any higher. The HOA probably wouldn’t allow it anyway.
She found Bear digging in the dirt alongside Chris and Julianne’s house. Man, that dog really was going to town too. She clipped the leash onto his collar and led him reluctantly back home. Maybe an earlier-than-usual trip to the dog park was in order today. She’d smooth things over with the neighbors later if it came to that.
Come to think of it, though, that dirt looked like it had been recently disturbed even before Bear got into it. Ah well. The dog certainly worked in mysterious ways, that was all she could say. “Humpf,” was all Bear himself ever said, this as he plopped himself down on the mattress in the living room, there to await whatever the rest of the day might bring. Hoomans: Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em. Whatcha gonna do? Nothing for it but to go with the flow. That was Bear’s mantra, and he was sticking with it.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Also: Bacon!
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The Pet Psychic had always thought of herself as “spiritual but not religious.” In spite of how she now made her living, nobody could ever accuse her of being a flake, She was the consumate pragmatist. And that’s what she liked best about dogs. Say what you will about “man’s best friend” and all the rest, they basically stayed true to their own natures and didn’t dissemble. If they tore up the furniture or tracked mud in the house or tipped over a garbage can, you could always count on them to look guilty as hell. The trick to the “psychic” gig was to stay still enough, and attentive enough, that you could get down on their level and really listen to what they wanted to say. Some breeds were dopier than others, of course. Some of the higher-strung Irish setters, for instance, were flaky as hell. But then again, you could say the same about some humans too.
As for religiosity, she simply couldn’t abide it. Man, the stuff people did under the guise of their version of God. If dogs had a religion, the tenets were very simple and straightforward: Feed me. Walk me. Pet me. And devil take the hindmost. If dogs had a sacrament, it almost certainly involved bacon.
As for loyalty and fidelity and Lassie sitting faithfully by the well after Timmy fell in? That was Hollywood, not real life. Dogs as a group were no more loyal than humans as a group. Which is to say, “sometimes.” And “maybe, if you’re lucky.” But only after trust had been established and all basic needs were met. Anything beyond that was pure BS.
There was a saying in the dog-training community, and the Pet Psychic took it as an Inviolate First Principle: “There are no bad dogs, only bad owners.” The pit-bull who snapped and snarled and strained against the leash? It was never an altar-boy on the other end of that leash. You could count on that being true 100 times out of 99.